The Argument Solver
Release Date: 2024 Feb 2nd
Studio: PacketLoss Studios (self-employed owner)
Platforms: PC
Team Size: Two Core Members (Darcy Glover and Myself) and two audio contractors (Daniel Evans and James Ashworth)
Project Length: 6 Months
My contributions:
Developed and shipped on a two-person team.
Designed and tuned major systems, implemented a seamless user experience.
Created and modeled all of the assets and levels (excluding player models). Sourced and developed the player controller and animations.
Published through Steamworks and made all the marketing assets.
Engine and Tools:
Unity.
Adobe Suite.
Steamworks.
Mixamo.
What is The Argument Solver?
The Argument Solver allows you to quickly solver your issues between 2 Parties in a very primate way. Easily create a lobby and be placed into our courtroom inspired Arena, where you can throw weapons at each other.
The Argument Solver is perfect for all kinds of head to head debates, below we have list a couple of our favorites:
- Can't decide between which MOBA to play.
- Help your partner what movie to watch by fighting over 2 options.
- Crippling debt from a long custody battle or watch your parents duke it out for your ownership.
Project Goals, Why make this game?
When I started discussing this idea with Darcy, a lot the requirements and goals needed to complete this game we’re quite valuable to us.
Creating a multiplayer game.
Building and Publishing for the Steam Store.
Improve our non-primary skills (C#/Coding for me, Networking For Darcy).
Designing seamless start to finish gameplay loop e.g. the player never looses site of their character.
Darcy and I had both covered subjects involving multiplayer at university but we never had complete free range in building our own system. We opted to use Unity’s new Networking Services as we it came with in-depth documentation and resources to help us pick it up quickly, It was also free and pretty robust.
Personally I really wanted to created to 3D UI system, too see if it gave more ‘juice’ then regulator 2D interfaces. Additionally I wanted the challenge of making gameplay loop where the player never looses sight of their character.
Design Process:
Design Goals & Rules
Other than my design goals for The Argument Solver, my ultimate goal really was to better myself in supporting my programmer (Darcy), I wanted to make sure when I designed this game it came with clear goals and systems that would allow Darcy to develop without having to stop and ask for clarity.
I directly quote Darcy here “As a programmer I want to be told me exactly what do”
I would apply this quote to my designs, systems and documentation to ensure it was clear and descriptive.
The Main design goals stay pretty static through out the whole development process, As a product we wanted to make sure the game was lightweight and took no longer then 2 minutes to complete. This helped define the game’s design rules and due to a 2 minute requirement kept the projects scope in-check.
Design Rules:
Loud and Fun: The aesthetic of the game should be comical and loud.
Seamless: The player should never visually see a scene change or a loading screen.
Quick Gameplay loop: The game should have that Mario party mini game pace, shouldn't take longer then 30 secs for the players to finish the fight.
Solves a Problem: The game needs to be designed to set the players up to fight over a problem they quickly want to solve. e.g. what's for dinner, who gets custody of the kids, etc.
Design Communication
Since it was just two developers and the gameplay was limited I was able narrow down the amount of major systems as well as we broke the game development cycle into 3 sections. We wanted to make sure we identified features and potential issues that were outside of our skill level or mass time sinks so that we could either pivot to a new solution or completely avoid these issues from the start.
Trello was super helpfully as it allowed us to visualize how much work there was needed to be done and the amount of time it would take. A lot of documentation was done in Trello as we found it way more efficient to have everything in one central location then jumping back for forth between Trello, excel and word.
There were 3 Major Game Systems needed:
UI/Menu Flowchart
Networking
Gameplay Loop
Level Design & Aesthetics
Level Design
Match the Aesthetic of the players models.
Be viewable from two different player perspectives and not give an advantage to either player.
Have small play area to make it easy to hit your opponent but not claustrophobic.
The development was a simple block out where I tested to make sure the scale was correct to the players proportions. Then a refined version of the block out. Furniture and windows we’re added after. Lastly the band members being placed on balconies.
Mentionable Notes:
We added a carpet to help players identify the map boundaries.
Band members weren’t originally apart of the design but it help fill up dead space on the walls and help sell the rock music that is played.
When it came to designing the level or as we called it 'the courtroom’, it was a fairly straight forward map. The courtroom had a small but precise criteria being:
Aesthetics
Designing the environment for The Argument Solver, I split it up into 2 section. The Menu Selection and the Arena.
For the Menu, I wanted a relaxing but lively vibe. I used a lower bpm Jazz song in combination with a brown gradient to make relaxing on the senses. I then added animated models with bold 3D interactable text to make it feel dynamic.
The Arena was essentially the opposite, I used a heavy rock song and placed the players in a small environment. With the addition of the judges playing instruments it helped keep the aesthetic consistent.
Publishing to Steam
The game was officially launched on February 2nd, 2024, and utilizing Steamworks proved to be the optimal platform for distribution. Now that the game is live, it's unlikely there will be further updates since both Darcy and I have transitioned to other projects. Nonetheless, the journey of bringing this game to fruition was truly fulfilling.
